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Radical Ideas to Transform the Infantry

This is a discussion on Radical Ideas to Transform the Infantry within the Military and Government Links forums, part of the News & Links category; [QUOTE=KUSA;1923655]Oh yeah?
Here's my favorite Ranger......

They have been moving the infantry to small unit Enhanced Squad level teams deploying for some time now. They function as a company would but smaller and faster to react. They do a lot more specialized trailing and it is limited and focused on mission .

Last edited by Smitty901; 07-09-2019 at 07:26 PM.

New life as a house husband, major shift in duties.

Karl Marx said, "Destroy their culture, rewrite their history. Ruin their art and literature, and defame their heroes, by offering fabrications to scandalize that which they considered good.
After reading this Obama said I am on it.

"There is nothing so exhilarating as to be shot at without result." Winston Churchill
"Leave the artillerymen alone, they are an obstinate lot." Napoleon
Member: VFW, American Legion, Vietnam Veterans of America, Society of the 5th Infantry Division, Sons of the American Revolution.

I was an 11B Ranger who later became a Green Beret, who now works with the Navy Seals. There is a critical difference to why all of these are better than traditional Service forces (and I don't mean better people, just better soldiers.

The entry is not easy and the standards were high. Everyone there wanted to be there and knew that if we succeeded it wasn't a big deal to the world, but it was everything to the individual. What made us different?
The discipline. Rangers had high and tight hair cuts, fresh every Monday morning. There were no exceptions. The uniforms in garrison were Starched so much that we had to literally push our legs through the pants and jackets and after a full day you could take them of and stand them up on their own again.

PT was abnormal. For the first four months there I and the new guys got PT'd twice a day. Once in the morning with everyone else, and once again at night, rotating between upper body and lower body work outs.

Running? I got there as a 140 lbs 5' 9" guy who could run 2 miles in 13 minutes plus some seconds, I could do 65 push-ups and about 60 situps and about 9 pull ups. 6 months later I did my first PT test in the Rangers. I ran 2 miles in 10:22, did 84 pushups, 92 situps, and 27 pull ups.

How? Cause they tried to get me to quit every day and every night by trying to physically break me. They smoked my ass until I passed out and had to go to the clinic to get IV's on two occasions. Oh the Clinic was run by Doc Donovan, a legendary Ranger Medic, turned PA who once made a guy do pushups on the operating table for sniveling.

PT was like this, every single week. 3 Mile run on Monday, squad level, 6 minute mile pace...you fall back you get PT'd in the evenings. 5 mile run on tuesday, platoon pace, 35 minute standard. Wednesday was usually a rucksack run, yes...even though its now said to be bad for you, we ran with a minimum 35 lb ruck and weapons in boots. Thursday was cross country run, usually an unknown path that the platoon sergeant picked out as he was running. It was more like Free running is today without all the BS spinning and such. We'd climb rail cars, barbed wire fences, run through drainage tunnels that ran the length of the runway nearby. Friday was either a 12 mile ruck march or a 10 to 15 mile run.

Training: We always trained with live ammo. Grenades, Laws, Claymores. Except for weapons qualification twice a year, we rarely had a live fire event happen from a BS firing line with Range safety NCO's every 10 feet and magazines carried separately from our weapons. We had our ammo on us, weapons loaded, we patrolled through the woods in the impact areas and woods and we fired like we would expect to in combat. While I was there my squad leader got grenade shrapnel in his face, our weapons squad leader took Claymore shrapnel in his shoulder, I blew tree down inadvertently by putting a claymore on the opposite side of it, the tree landed on one of our m60 gunners and broke his arm. Several guys broke legs and ankles in jumps. I suffered neck and back injuries by flipping a motorcycle into a ditch while riding it down a runway in the middle of the night, using PVS-5's that had ahit for depth perception. A close friend parachuted into a club of concertina that was stretch across an airfield one night, and slit his wrist trying to get out...His buddy suffered several gashes administering buddy aid to him until a medic got there. Not once did they stop the training or go white lights. You treated it like you would in real combat, you just had help coming faster.

As an SF guy, we routinely fired more ammo in our Team than a battalion of Infantry would fire in a year. We used Demo, det chord and all of the other explosive stuff all the time. It was routine. We gave each other IV's while training usually in the dark with a small red filtered pen light.

So how do you make our Infantry better? Well you don't hire them, you don't find them, you make them from people who want to be the best. And you don't do that by lowering standards. You don't do that by social experimentations. You don't do that by eliminating discipline or nuanced military order from their lives.

Yes you can pay them more for being willing to take on that life, but it has to be a special duty pay, not enhanced rank pay (i.e. you come in an E-4). You give them more money for clothing allowances which lets them buy uniforms more often, because in really good training, you ruin uniforms very fast. Compare that to the personnel clerk who never goes to the field, but gets the same clothing allowance as an infantryman does.

You train them in a realistic way, and you accept that there will be injuries and yes, maybe deaths in training sometimes. You bring back technical ranks such as Specialist 5-8 and Tech Sergeants, so that they never get put in leadership positions, just by transferring in from a non Infantry MOS. And Yes... offer them a 15 year retirement option... because after that, most of us are fairly broken down and its better to get them out than let them take jobs like supply sergeants, armorer, or NBC NCO's or worse become desk jockeys in staff who can no longer do what the infantry demands.

You also need to keep units together longer. rotating folks around every year or so means inconsistent training, and allows bad soldiers and bad leaders to persist and advance.

But in truth most Rangers only last about 4-6 years in the battalions, and then they move on. Combat is typically a young mans game and it takes hard men to come back and lead and make hard soldiers. It burns most out fast.

SF guys, usually average 6 to 8 years in regular services before they apply and come over. It used to be only E-4 promotable and above could apply with minimum of 4 years service. You brought over the training from your previous job and learned all your SF training, which in my day was between 18 months and 2 years long.

They started recruiting them off the street in 2002. Bringing in people 21 or older with at least two years of college. We called it the SF Baby program. Its first class of about 60 people, graduated 2 after over 2 years of training. Chris Faukle was one. He was a great guy and an exception. He died in 2005 during my last tour in Afghanistan. After that first class the standards lowered and they flooded SF with these folks.... we didn't become better... just overall younger with more discipline issues, less experience, and more divorces.

well, I don't have a solution....but I know what stupid looks like.....

Wonderful post and I am respectful and have grattiude for your service.

I was too young for Vietnam, and old for later conflicts.

My Dad was 8th Air force, England and Germany.

I don't know what to do with military leaders/politicians that can't find their azz from a toilet.

While we still have Army, Navy , Air force, Marines and Coast guard in time of war those line have been blurring for a generation . Joint force deployments are the norm now. Air force part of Army infantry units. Army and Naval service member serving side by side.
Leadership train in joint forces is a big thing now and with out it you are going no were past E-7 in the Infantry and like by E-7 you have had some.
The concept of joint forces was born in the mid to late 70's. Stalled but did not go away. It is in high gear now.

New life as a house husband, major shift in duties.

Karl Marx said, "Destroy their culture, rewrite their history. Ruin their art and literature, and defame their heroes, by offering fabrications to scandalize that which they considered good.
After reading this Obama said I am on it.

I believe those SEALS were inserted and retrieved by US Army Aviation. Specifically the Night Stalkers.

My best friend I grew up with was a Night Stalker pilot. He retire in 2009.
Night Stalkers fly all SMU's to their mission and back if needed. Rangers specialize in retrieving people.
They all, every special forces person, have unique jobs to do.. They are not all the same. SEALS have Anti Terrorism, Underwater SDVT Units and so forth..
But lets be honest, SEALS always have better hair cuts.